PMQs verdict: two figures throwing statistics at each other

Key points

Under Jeremy Corbyn PMQs rarely strays far from contrasting party positions on public spending, with this week’s exchange ranging across disability benefits, public sector pay and student debt. On disability benefits he quoted the UN body which described the position of disabled people in Britain as a “human catastrophe”. May said government spending on people with disabilities was the second-highest per head in the G7.

The government is under heavy pressure from public sector workers across the board for a rise that at least matches inflation – 2.9%, according to yesterday’s figures – and a negative reaction from police and prison officers to this week’s pay offer. Corbyn insisted, correctly, that even the latest offer represented a real-terms cut and accused the government of financing that increase from existing services budgets. May insisted the increase was recommended by independent review bodies and said Labour was ignoring scaled pay rises that would have seen an officer who joined the forced in 2010 earn over £9,000 more by this year.

Corbyn then quoted the chancellor, Philip Hammond, who, he claimed, had been boasting to the Conservative backbench 1922 Committee about the healthy financial position of MPs, which Corbyn paraphrased as telling them they had never had is so good. May chided him for not mentioning today’s healthy unemployment figures.

The Labour leader then asked whether May would today vote against another hike in university tuition fees, having quoted a letter from a recent graduate named Aysha who carried a heavy burden of debt. May dodged the question, taking refuge in the fact that tuition fees had been originally introduced by Tony Blair’s government.

Verdict

Corbyn easily had the best soundbite of those exchanges – the spoof, and very apposite, recasting of Harold Macmillan’s famous “never had it so good” – and his wide-ranging case against May was solid, but there was no point at which he caused her convincing unease or embarrassment in a drab exchange that effectively amount to a draw. It was not that May was especially effective; she dodged the key question (about a below-inflation pay rise being a real-terms cut) and at one point she took refuge in an irrelevant and slightly tedious generalised anti-Labour rant. (If you are going to try to change the subject at PMQs by taking a detour into Corbyn-bashing, as Cameron did almost every week, at least make it incisive, or funny.)

Her point about Labour introducing tuition fees seemed particularly otiose in the light of Corbyn’s own relationship with the Blair regime. Her answers were never very good, but she did at least manage to parry all Corbyn’s questions and, apart from the moment when he pointed out that record employment is no good if wages are lousy, generally he did not follow up on his points. Not for the first time, it sounded like two figures throwing statistics at each other with not enough actual engagement.

Memorable lines

A Conservative prime minister once told Britain, ‘you’ve never had it so good’. Now a Conservative chancellor tells his own MPs that.

Corbyn gets some mileage from Philip Hammond’s message to the 1922 Committee.

He promised workers he would protect their rights; on Monday he let them down. He promised students he would deal with their debt; he has let them down. He promised to support Trident, but he has let voters down. And he promised to back Brexit, but has let people down.